


the haven of you.

by misery_fell



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Drabble, F/F, Falling In Love, Girls in Love, I Will Go Down With This Ship, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I'm Bad At Tagging, Light Angst, Pining, Possibly Unrequited Love, for all your pining!emily needs, get it together, personally i think it's a hate crime that girls in love isn't a tag, sapphic yearning, that should be a tag, they are! so cute your honor!, this girl is. so in love with JJ
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 01:27:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29127189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misery_fell/pseuds/misery_fell
Summary: A particularly stressful case ends up sending Emily right back to her safe space- an art museum. JJ, unexpectedly, joins her. Were they ever really just friends?
Relationships: Jennifer "JJ" Jareau & Emily Prentiss, Jennifer "JJ" Jareau/Emily Prentiss
Comments: 4
Kudos: 60





	the haven of you.

**Author's Note:**

> ur honor they are. gay. and in love. i know that will exists but like. your honor. it's yearning hours. set like,,, before foyet lol

The Smithsonian had always been a sort of haven, for Emily. Even as her mother’s job took her around the world, thrown in and out of cultures and lives- DC always came back, and with it, free access to virtually any museum in the city. 

In these walls, she wasn’t anyone anymore. The only thing that mattered, really, was the art- the colors, the shapes, the emotions it could invoke- Emily loved it. 

Don’t get her wrong, Emily loved her job at the BAU. And normally, the gore and violence they worked with on a daily basis didn’t bother her- she had meant what she said to JJ, back when Reid was taken. Typically, it was compartmentalized. But sometimes, just every now and then- the cases weighed heavily on her mind. 

This most recent case was one of those. They’d been taken to Albany, New York, into the outer suburbs- someone was purposely victimizing elderly queer couples and brutally killing them. It had been hard on all of them- Reid, of course, had buried himself in work, and Morgan used far too much physical force than necessary when apprehending their unsub. Hotch had taken to having an evening nightcap with Dave- and JJ, wonderful JJ, had spent half the case glancing nervously at Emily, making sure she was okay. 

It had been sweet. It was friendly, too. The kind of gesture she knew wasn’t supposed to spark the kind of feelings that simmered in her stomach, but it did. And so with all of the anxiety and the hurt, staring at the pain of the world, Emily had retreated as soon as they touched back down, asking Hotch to drive her to the Smithsonian. Unsurprisingly, Hotch hadn’t questioned her slightly hostile mood- but then again, he probably already knew why. Emily didn't much care, then and there. 

Currently, all she could get her eyes to focus on was the painting in front of her. It was a lovely piece, really, one she kept returning to- a watercolor portrait of a garden. It had a sort of sadness to it, despite its color. It made Emily think of the time she took JJ to a botanical garden, staring forward at her. It was hard to hide the affection her heart was bursting with.

All of the noise in the background faded, the subtle movements of people from one gallery to the next- Emily just kept craning her neck upwards, sat on a bench in the center of the room. She’s so engrossed in her observation she nearly misses the featherlight touch on her shoulder, the whisper of her name.

Emily’s breath nearly catches. 

“Hey, JJ,” she exhales. Somehow, she keeps her tone even, indisputably aware of the woman beside her. JJ may not have been a profiler, but she was no idiot, and Emily desperately needed to keep this under wraps. “How’d you know I was here?”

It’s a question, but one she might already know the answer to. Anyone who cared about Emily likely knew about her fondness for museums. Sometimes, though, Emily was so eager to feel like JJ didn’t care. That would make things easier.

The flowers begin to blend together on the canvas in a beautiful haze.

“You love this place. Lucky guess,” she intones. It’s searching, and Emily can feel the eyes weighing on her shoulder.

She ignores the answer. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it,” Emily concludes, after a moment of silence. In the flowers, in the reds and yellows and pinks, she can’t help but see the love blooming in her fragile heart.

JJ’s eyes move away from her, and so Emily lets hers look over. The sweater she was wearing looked softer than a cloud, and Emily refrains from reaching out.

“Not the prettiest thing in here,” JJ says. There’s a soft and subtle smile on her face, sparks dancing through her eyes. Emily’s mind circles around the implications over and over, trying to make sense of it. The words hurt. It hurts, more than it should. 

“You think I’m beautiful?” She asks, full intentions for it to be displayed as a joke. But the words catch in her throat and instead come out soft, nearly vulnerable.

“I think that you’re art,” JJ replies. Emily shudders, risking a glance at that honey-blond hair. She wasn’t meant for this. Emily was never supposed to have anything like this, and she remembers Will, and knows that she still can’t. It aches. She nearly cries.

“And there’s a difference?” She grins. Even the colors in front of her don’t soothe her breaking heart. Emily wonders when the cracks in her facade started forming, around JJ. She can’t quite remember. 

“Art isn’t perfect,” she whispers. Her eyes, like two storms, churning and crashing violently against the shore. Emily doesn’t know when she was pulled under.

She scrunches her nose, but before the heavy mood can dissipate, something overtakes her face once again. Tears well up behind her eyes and she’s once again reminded of everything she can never have. 

“JJ,” she tries. Her voice breaks over the words, staring at JJ’s face. There’s something ten times more artful about the curve of her jaw than any of the so-called ‘masterpieces’ in the entirety of this museum. Emily wonders if this is why she’s always found such a haven of art: it seemed every girl she had ever loved was crafted of it. “Don’t do this,” and her hands are twitching in her lap. She wants to hold her.

JJ looks away for a moment, only for her gaze to be drawn back, like a moth to a flame. “It’s true, you know,” she says, nervously biting her lip. There’s something so tender, about the gesture. As if to say this: I know I have hurt you so let this end hurt too.

It’s too much. It hurts too much to be the end. The case from earlier has never been farther from her mind, and she lays a hand over JJ’s, letting a tear slip free.

The Smithsonian had always been her haven. Now, it seemed: JJ might be, too.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you liked! please do comment if u too think it's a hate crime that there isn't more fics for this pairing. if you want, give me fun lil requests or somethin somethin! yeahhh!! as always, leave comments and kudos if you enjoyed. thank u!!


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